The tooth fairy example gets a variety of responses
Seriously? I’ve never heard anyone insist that the tooth fairy really exists (in the form of their mother). It would seem most contrary to common usage (in my community, at least) to use ‘Tooth Fairy’ to denote “whoever replaced the tooth under my pillow with a coin”. The magical element is (in my experience) treated as essential to the term and not a mere “connotation”.
I’ve heard of the saying you mention, but I think you misunderstand people when you interpret it literally. My response was not intended as some “peculiar” declaration of mind-independent meaning facts, but rather as a straightforward interpretation of what people who utter such claims have in mind when they do so. (Ask them, “Do you mean that the tooth fairy exists?” and I expect the response, “No, silly, I just mean that my mother is responsible for the coin under my pillow.”)
So, to clarify: I don’t think that there are free-floating “meaning” facts out there independently of our linguistic dispositions. I just dispute whether your definitions adequately capture the things that most people really care about (i.e. treat as essential) when using the terms in question.
It’s no excuse to say that metaethical reductionism “gets reality right” when the whole dispute is instead over whether they have accommodated (or rather eliminated) some concept of which we have a pre-theoretic grasp. Compare the theological reductionist thesis that “God is love”. Love exists, therefore God exists, voila! If someone pointed out that this view is needlessly misleading since love is not what most people mean to be talking about when they speak of ‘God’ (and it would be more honest to just admit one’s atheism), it would be no response to give a lecture about constellations and tinkerbell.
I just dispute whether your definitions adequately capture the things that most people really care about (i.e. treat as essential) when using the terms in question.
It’s no excuse to say that metaethical reductionism “gets reality right” when the whole dispute is instead over whether they have accommodated (or rather eliminated) some concept of which we have a pre-theoretic grasp.
What if metaethical reductionism is not meant (by some) to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of most people, but just to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of people like lessdazed? Could metaethical reductionism be considered a “respectable position” in that sense?
And separately, suppose the main reason I’m interested in metaethics is that I am trying to answer a question like “Should I terminally value the lives of random strangers?” and I’m not sure what that question means exactly or how I should go about answering it. In this case, is there a reason for me to care much about the pre-theoretic grasp of most people, as opposed to, say, people I think are most likely to be right about morality?
Compare the theological reductionist thesis that “God is love”. Love exists, therefore God exists, voila!
This is a good example, as people saying this are in some ways doing the opposite of what you advocate, but in other ways, they are doing the same thing.
I think people are motivated to say “God is love” out of a desire to avoid being logically compelled to view certain others as wrong (there is a twist, some passive aggressive non-believers say it to claim atheists are wrong when saying theists are wrong). The exact motivation isn’t important, but its presence would provide a countervailing force against the sheer silliness of their confusion (which is worse than yours in an important way) and explain how they could possibly make it.
The mistake being made is to pretend that there are inherently attached meanings to a word, as if those words simply had that meaning, regardless of context of using words in general, and that word in particular, when that context is totally adequate to explain meaning. When it is clear that contemporary theists and all their ancestors were in error, the hippie says “God is love” to pretend there is no disagreement, and that “God” meant love—instead of what was obviously meant, or often weirdly in addition to the contradictory thing that they admit was meant.
You do the opposite in that rather than seek ways to interpret others as agreeing or being right, even when there is obvious disagreement, you seek ways to interpret others as disagreeing or being wrong. You use the exact same mechanism of ignoring context and how language is used.
You avoid the worst error of the hippies, which is claiming that others mean both “God is love” and “God is an agent, etc.”
However, reductionists take the history of language and find words have many connotations, the meaning of “moral” and find it has a long history of meaning many different things, many of several things, and that the meaning people accept as associated to the term has to do with the quantity and quality of many aspects, none of which are intrinsic.
You have apparently decided that it’s magic or moral facts are the type of facts that can’t be explained in terms of how the world is is the element absolutely essential to “morality”, when (presumably, as so many random hundreds I’ve encountered accept the reductionist usage) thousands of others do not.
I doubt that were there a room full of hippies totally separated from theism that they would feel any need to obfuscate by saying “God is love”, which is why it is appropriate to barge in and correct the usage, as the usage is confusion designed to create the illusion of agreement.
You are attempting to create an illusion of disagreement about morality, where your disagreement is with how multitudes use “morality”—and that is not the sort of argument that it is possible to win because if that’s how we’re using it, that makes it right when we talk without confusion among each other, and reasonably use it with those whose linguistic sensibilities we don’t know explicitly. The reason why we’re doing so is because it most clearly communicates (out of all the words we could have used), and our stretching the meaning of “morality” to exclude magic is no more unusual than the stretching of the term “write” to include jabbing at keys with the fingers. We would continue to use it so in absence of non-reductionists, whereas hippies would revert to “love” in absence of theism.
I’ve heard of the saying you mention, but I think you misunderstand people when you interpret it literally.
Please understand, the disagreement is not about what happens but about what it means to literally be the tooth fairy.
Seriously? I’ve never heard anyone insist that the tooth fairy really exists (in the form of their mother). It would seem most contrary to common usage (in my community, at least) to use ‘Tooth Fairy’ to denote “whoever replaced the tooth under my pillow with a coin”. The magical element is (in my experience) treated as essential to the term and not a mere “connotation”.
I’ve heard of the saying you mention, but I think you misunderstand people when you interpret it literally. My response was not intended as some “peculiar” declaration of mind-independent meaning facts, but rather as a straightforward interpretation of what people who utter such claims have in mind when they do so. (Ask them, “Do you mean that the tooth fairy exists?” and I expect the response, “No, silly, I just mean that my mother is responsible for the coin under my pillow.”)
So, to clarify: I don’t think that there are free-floating “meaning” facts out there independently of our linguistic dispositions. I just dispute whether your definitions adequately capture the things that most people really care about (i.e. treat as essential) when using the terms in question.
It’s no excuse to say that metaethical reductionism “gets reality right” when the whole dispute is instead over whether they have accommodated (or rather eliminated) some concept of which we have a pre-theoretic grasp. Compare the theological reductionist thesis that “God is love”. Love exists, therefore God exists, voila! If someone pointed out that this view is needlessly misleading since love is not what most people mean to be talking about when they speak of ‘God’ (and it would be more honest to just admit one’s atheism), it would be no response to give a lecture about constellations and tinkerbell.
What if metaethical reductionism is not meant (by some) to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of most people, but just to accommodate the pre-theoretic grasp of “morality” of people like lessdazed? Could metaethical reductionism be considered a “respectable position” in that sense?
And separately, suppose the main reason I’m interested in metaethics is that I am trying to answer a question like “Should I terminally value the lives of random strangers?” and I’m not sure what that question means exactly or how I should go about answering it. In this case, is there a reason for me to care much about the pre-theoretic grasp of most people, as opposed to, say, people I think are most likely to be right about morality?
This is a good example, as people saying this are in some ways doing the opposite of what you advocate, but in other ways, they are doing the same thing.
I think people are motivated to say “God is love” out of a desire to avoid being logically compelled to view certain others as wrong (there is a twist, some passive aggressive non-believers say it to claim atheists are wrong when saying theists are wrong). The exact motivation isn’t important, but its presence would provide a countervailing force against the sheer silliness of their confusion (which is worse than yours in an important way) and explain how they could possibly make it.
The mistake being made is to pretend that there are inherently attached meanings to a word, as if those words simply had that meaning, regardless of context of using words in general, and that word in particular, when that context is totally adequate to explain meaning. When it is clear that contemporary theists and all their ancestors were in error, the hippie says “God is love” to pretend there is no disagreement, and that “God” meant love—instead of what was obviously meant, or often weirdly in addition to the contradictory thing that they admit was meant.
You do the opposite in that rather than seek ways to interpret others as agreeing or being right, even when there is obvious disagreement, you seek ways to interpret others as disagreeing or being wrong. You use the exact same mechanism of ignoring context and how language is used.
You avoid the worst error of the hippies, which is claiming that others mean both “God is love” and “God is an agent, etc.”
However, reductionists take the history of language and find words have many connotations, the meaning of “moral” and find it has a long history of meaning many different things, many of several things, and that the meaning people accept as associated to the term has to do with the quantity and quality of many aspects, none of which are intrinsic.
You have apparently decided that it’s magic or moral facts are the type of facts that can’t be explained in terms of how the world is is the element absolutely essential to “morality”, when (presumably, as so many random hundreds I’ve encountered accept the reductionist usage) thousands of others do not.
I doubt that were there a room full of hippies totally separated from theism that they would feel any need to obfuscate by saying “God is love”, which is why it is appropriate to barge in and correct the usage, as the usage is confusion designed to create the illusion of agreement.
You are attempting to create an illusion of disagreement about morality, where your disagreement is with how multitudes use “morality”—and that is not the sort of argument that it is possible to win because if that’s how we’re using it, that makes it right when we talk without confusion among each other, and reasonably use it with those whose linguistic sensibilities we don’t know explicitly. The reason why we’re doing so is because it most clearly communicates (out of all the words we could have used), and our stretching the meaning of “morality” to exclude magic is no more unusual than the stretching of the term “write” to include jabbing at keys with the fingers. We would continue to use it so in absence of non-reductionists, whereas hippies would revert to “love” in absence of theism.
Please understand, the disagreement is not about what happens but about what it means to literally be the tooth fairy.